ed to be
winding from headland to headland among the purple hills, in sunlight a
mirror between shadowy, forest banks, at night, molten silver in the
moon-track. Afternoon slipped into night and night to morning, and each
hour of daylight presented some new panorama of forests and hills and
torrents. Here the river widened into a lake. There the lake narrowed to
rapids; and so we came to Lachine--La Chine, named in ridicule of the
gallant explorer, La Salle, who thought these vast waterways would
surely lead him to China.

At Lachine, Mr. Jack MacKenzie, with much brusque bluster to conceal his
longings for the life he was too old to follow and many cynical
injunctions about "skinning the skunk" and "knocking the head off
anything that stood in my way" and "always profiting from the follies
of other men"--"mind, have none yourself,"--parted from us. Here, too,
Eric gripped my hand a tense, wordless farewell and left our party for
the Hudson's Bay brigade under Colin Robertson.

It has always been a mystery to me why our rivals sent that brigade to
Athabasca by way of Lachine instead of Hudson Bay, which would have been
two thousand miles nearer. We Nor'-Westers went all the way to and from
Montreal, solely because that was our only point of access to the sea;
but the Hudson's Bay people had their own Hudson Bay for a starting
place. Why, in their slavish imitation of the methods, which brought us
success, they also adopted our disadvantages, I could never understand.
Birch canoes and good tripmen could, of course, as the Hudson's Bay men
say, be most easily obtained in Quebec; but with a good organizer, the
same could have been gathered up two thousand miles nearer York Factory,
on Hudson Bay. Indeed, I have often thought the sole purpose of that
expedition was to get Nor'-Westers' methods by employing discarded
Nor'-Westers as trappers and _voyageurs_. Colin Robertson, the leader,
had himself been a Nor'-Wester; and all the men with him except Eric
Hamilton were renegades, "turn-coat traders," as we called them. But I
must not be unjust; for neither company could possibly exceed the other
in its zeal to entice away old trappers, who would reveal opponents'
secrets. Acting on my uncle's advice, I made shift to pick up a few
crumbs of valuable information. Had the Hudson's Bay known, I suppose
they would have called me a spy. That was the name I gave any of them
who might try such tricks with me. The General Assembly of